At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN.

Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and violent protests over police shootings of black men. The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers the first look at how accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency used geographically targeted advertising to sow political chaos in the United States, the sources said.

Facebook has previously said that roughly one-quarter of the 3,000 ads bought by the agency were geographically targeted, but it has not revealed any specific locations. Facebook has also not revealed which demographic groups and interest groups were targeted by the ads.

The Black Lives Matter ad appeared on Facebook at some point in late 2015 or early 2016, the sources said. The sources said it appears the ad was meant to appear both as supporting Black Lives Matter but also could be seen as portraying the group as threatening to some residents of Baltimore and Ferguson.

New descriptions of the Russian-bought ads shared with CNN suggest that the apparent goal of the Russian buyers was to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos, though not necessarily to promote one candidate or cause over another. Facebook’s review of Russian efforts on its platform focused on a timeframe from June 2015 to May 2017.

These ranged from posts promoting Black Lives Matter to posts promoting gun rights and the Second Amendment to posts warning about what they said was the threat undocumented immigrants posed to American democracy. Beyond the election, Russians have sought to raise questions about western democracies.

“This is consistent with the overall goal of creating discord inside the body politic here in the United States, and really across the West,” Steve Hall, the former CIA officer and CNN National Security Analyst, said. “It shows they the level of sophistication of their targeting. They are able to sow discord in a very granular nature, target certain communities and link them up with certain issues.”

The Internet Research Agency is a shadowy agency that U.S. military intelligence has described as “a state-funded organization that blogs and tweets on behalf of the Kremlin.” A senior Kremlin spokesman said last week that Russia did not buy ads on Facebook to influence the election.

The ads were bought through Facebook’s self-service ad model, which allows buyers to target their ads to users based on several criteria, including geographic location, demographic categories and specific interests.

Senator Mark Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that the “million-dollar question” about the Facebook ads centered on how the Russians knew whom to target.

“Did they know this just by following political news in America? Did they geo-target both geography and by demographics in ways that at least at first blush appear pretty sophisticated? These are the kind of questions that we need to get answered and that’s why we need them in a public hearing,” Warner said.

The targeting issue is also important because, if it appears that the targeting was particularly sophisticated, questions may be raised about how the Russians knew where to direct their ads. Further, information about the targeting could help investigators determine whether or not there was collusion between these ad buyers and the Trump campaign.

Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that there’s “no evidence yet” that Russians and Trump officials colluded on the Facebook ads, but said it’s an area the committee continues to investigate.

The Black Lives Matter ad targeted toward Baltimore and Ferguson, which sources discussed with CNN on the condition of anonymity, was one of a small handful of ads presented to congress earlier this month. Facebook has said that it will hand over detailed records of all 3,000 ads to congress in a matter of days. CNN has not seen the ad but the targeted was described by the sources.

Facebook has already handed over copies of the ads and information about the relevant accounts to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Facebook did not comment for this story but did point to a statement from Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, who said earlier this month that “the vast majority of ads run by these accounts didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or a particular candidate.”

“Rather,” Stamos said, “the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”

Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that the aim of the ad-buyers “was to sow chaos.”

“In many cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout,” he told reporters.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will also hear from Twitter on Thursday about how foreign nationals may have used its ad service to influence the 2016 election. Twitter has declined to shed any light so far on what information it plans to give to Congress.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said someone leaked information about his call this week with White House chief of staff John Kelly, possibly to undermine his ability to speak directly with President Trump about WikiLeaks.

The Republican congressman from California spoke with Kelly on Wednesday regarding his recent meeting with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in London, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday evening, and broached a possible trade.

Rohrabacher reportedly used the word “deal” in his conversation with Kelly and said Assange would get a pardon or “something like that” in exchange for information files on a data-storage device showing that Russia did not hack Democratic emails that WikiLeaks published last year during the 2016 campaign.

“He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,” Rohrabacher told Kelly, according to the Journal.

Rohrabacher told the Washington Examiner on Friday evening that he would not confirm quotes attributed to him, and said nobody in his office was responsible for disclosing the call.

“I have honored the confidentially of a very important business-related call,” he said, speculating that someone inside the White House or within U.S. intelligence agencies leaked the call.

“I don’t know who it is, all I know is I’m up against an array of very powerful forces, including the intelligence services and major newspapers that are basically allied with the liberal Left who have every reason to undermine communication on this issue,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Rohrabacher said White House leaks to the press are particularly bad during Republican presidencies, as staffers attempt to ingratiate themselves with reporters, and he’s not ruling that out as an explanation.

“You’ve got people who are obviously just trying to cover their ass for mistakes they have made,” he added, referring to the intelligence agency theory. “They will probably do their best to keep Trump from knowing about this and knowing about his options to expose this.”

Rohrabacher has for years been skeptical of U.S. policy toward Russia, defending its annexation of Crimea while former President Barack Obama was in office before refusing to accept that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.

The congressman is celebrated by some groups for his maverick approach to politics, such as his leadership role pushing for marijuana reform legislation, but also is known for making sometimes head-turning remarks.

Rohrabacher was quoted earlier this week as saying he believed Confederate war re-enactors had been tricked into rallying in Charlottesville, Va., last month. He said he stood by those remarks.

“I don’t think I was misquoted, [but] there should be no implication that I believe Civil War re-enactors are stupid,” he said. Rohrabacher said he can’t recall the source of that information, but that he believes he heard it in a news report.

Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under U.S. government surveillance following November’s presidential election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday.

Nunes said the surveillance appeared to be legal but that he was concerned because it was not related to the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and was widely disseminated across the intelligence community.

“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,” Nunes told reporters. “It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the president-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.”

Nunes said he is heading to the White House later Wednesday to brief Trump on what he has learned, which he said came from “sources who thought that we should know it.” He said he was trying to get more information by Friday from the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Nunes described the surveillance as most likely being “incidental collection.” This can occur when a person inside the United States communicates with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. In such cases, the identities of U.S. citizens are supposed to be kept secret — but can be “unmasked” by intelligence officials under certain circumstances.

Nunes said his new information appears to show that additional members of the Trump transition team — beyond former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — were unmasked. This means they were identified in U.S. intelligence reports.

He said the information that he had seen and was disseminated across the intelligence community appeared to him to have “little or no apparent intelligence value.”

Anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks released a set of documents allegedly showing CIA espionage on candidates in France’s 2012 presidential elections.

The seven pages of documents appear to be classified orders for intelligence operatives to gather information regarding candidates’ political strategies and internal communications. WikiLeaks’ release of the documents comes amid growing tensions between Trump and the intelligence community over leaks of classified information that have portrayed people close to Trump in a negative light.

“All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA’s human (“HUMINT”) and electronic (“SIGINT”) spies in the seven months leading up to France’s 2012 presidential election,” a press release from WikiLeaks states.

“The revelations are contained within three CIA tasking orders published today by WikiLeaks as context for its forth coming CIA Vault 7 series. Named specifically as targets are the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) together with current President Francois Hollande, then President Nicolas Sarkozy, current round one presidential front runner Marine Le Pen, and former presidential candidates Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Khan.”

“Analysts in CIA’s Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA) closely watched the Oct 9th and Oct 16th Socialist primaries and will be closely monitoring the April 22nd and May 6th 2012 Presidential elections. Of particular interest is President Sarkozy, the Socialist Party (PS), and other potential candidate’s plans and intentions for these elections,” one of the three CIA orders released by WikiLeaks states.

“Analysts assess that the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the current ruling party, is not assured of winning the presidential election and, as a result, analysts are interested in the electoral strategy of the non-ruling parties listed below. Additional information on these topics will help analysts assess, and prepare key US policymakers for, the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations.”

Instructions for CIA operatives, according to the documents, included documenting French presidential candidates’ political strategies, views of the U.S. and sources of political funding.

Former NSA Analyst Claims Intel Community Will Go ‘Nuclear’ Against Trump

John Schindler, a former National Security Agency analyst and current columnist for the New York Observer, said Wednesday that the intelligence community will go “nuclear” against President Donald Trump.

The national security columnist also quoted a senior intelligence official telling him that Trump “will die in jail.” “Now we go nuclear. [Intelligence community] war going to new levels. Just got an [email from] from senior [intelligence community] friend, it began: ‘He will die in jail,’” Schindler tweeted.

The Observer columnist has for months taken a strong stance against Trump. He recently wrote an article called “The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins.”

This came after President Trump angrily tweeted about continued leaks to major media outlets. “Information is being illegally given to the failing [New York Times] & [Washington Post] by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia,” Trump wrote.

Schindler received heat for his tweet suggesting a coup by the intelligence community.

ABC News chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran tweeted, “If this source is for real, talk of a ‘Deep State’ coup aren’t insane. [The president] will ‘die in jail’? Who do you think you are?”

The former NSA analyst stood by his comment and said, “Surprisingly, some US spies consider [the president] colluding with [Russian intelligence services] + Kremlin, [including] election theft, to be kinda treason-y.”

WASHINGTON — In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.

Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.

Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.

“This is not expanding the substantive ability of law enforcement to get access to signals intelligence,” said Robert S. Litt, the general counsel to Mr. Clapper. “It is simply widening the aperture for a larger number of analysts, who will be bound by the existing rules.”

But Patrick Toomey, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the move an erosion of rules intended to protect the privacy of Americans when their messages are caught by the N.S.A.’s powerful global collection methods. He noted that domestic internet data was often routed or stored abroad, where it may get vacuumed up without court oversight.

“Rather than dramatically expanding government access to so much personal data, we need much stronger rules to protect the privacy of Americans,” Mr. Toomey said. “Seventeen different government agencies shouldn’t be rooting through Americans’ emails with family members, friends and colleagues, all without ever obtaining a warrant.”

The N.S.A. has been required to apply similar privacy protections to foreigners’ information since early 2014, an unprecedented step that President Obama took after the disclosures of N.S.A. documents by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden. The other intelligence agencies will now have to follow those rules, too.

Under the new system, agencies will ask the N.S.A. for access to specific surveillance feeds, making the case that they contain information relevant and useful to their missions. The N.S.A. will grant requests it deems reasonable after considering factors like whether large amounts of Americans’ private information might be included and, if so, how damaging or embarrassing it would be if that information were “improperly used or disclosed.”

The move is part of a broader trend of tearing down bureaucratic barriers to sharing intelligence between agencies that dates back to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 2002, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court secretly began permitting the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to share raw intercepts gathered domestically under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

After Congress enacted the FISA Amendments Act — which legalized warrantless surveillance on domestic soil so long as the target is a foreigner abroad, even when the target is communicating with an American — the court permitted raw sharing of emails acquired under that program, too.

In July 2008, the same month Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act, President George W. Bush modified Executive Order 12333, which sets rules for surveillance that domestic wiretapping statutes do not address, including techniques that vacuum up vast amounts of content without targeting anybody.

After the revision, Executive Order 12333 said the N.S.A. could share the raw fruits of such surveillance after the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, coordinating with the defense secretary, agreed on procedures. It took another eight years to develop those rules.

The Times first reported the existence of those deliberations in 2014 and later filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for documents about them. It ended that case last February, and Mr. Litt discussed the efforts in an interview at that time, but declined to divulge certain important details because the rules were not yet final or public.

Among the most important questions left unanswered in February was when analysts would be permitted to use Americans’ names, email addresses or other identifying information to search a 12333 database and pull up any messages to, from or about them that had been collected without a warrant.

There is a parallel debate about the FISA Amendments Act’s warrantless surveillance program. National security analysts sometimes search that act’s repository for Americans’ information, as do F.B.I. agents working on ordinary criminal cases. Critics call this the “backdoor search loophole,” and some lawmakers want to require a warrant for such searches.

By contrast, the 12333 sharing procedures allow analysts, including those at the F.B.I., to search the raw data using an American’s identifying information only for the purpose of foreign intelligence or counterintelligence investigations, not for ordinary criminal cases. And they may do so only if one of several other conditions are met, such as a finding that the American is an agent of a foreign power.

However, under the rules, if analysts stumble across evidence that an American has committed any crime, they will send it to the Justice Department.

The limits on using Americans’ information gathered under Order 12333 do not apply to metadata: logs showing who contacted whom, but not what they said. Analysts at the intelligence agencies may study social links between people, in search of hidden associates of known suspects, “without regard to the location or nationality of the communicants.”